This article presents a model of comprehension to support classroom teachers as they engage their students in making meaning from text. Four areas contribute to the comprehension process: the reader, the context, the text, and the transaction, which is described as the intersection of the reader and text situated within a specific context. This…

Creating a learning and instructional environment for teaching students in a "humane and efficient" manner, this book is designed to empower teachers by providing them with specific suggestions for problems they will encounter as they provide students with direct, explicit instruction in reading. As in earlier editions, the book devotes…

A contract deliverable on the NIE Communication Skills Project, this report consists of three separate documents describing the instructional implications of the analytic and empirical work carried out for the "Classroom Instruction in Reading Comprehension" part of the project: (1) Guidelines for Phrasal Segmentation; (2) Parsing Tasks…

The document describes the development and use of skill sequences in individualized education programs (IEPs) for mildly handicapped students. Developed to standardize format and terminology among teachers and parents, the sequences promote the continuity of instruction and the maintenance of consistent records. Sequences were developed for use…

Investigating the selective attention strategy, a study examined the type of attention allocated to important information by good and poor readers. Also tested was the methodological validity of using a conceptual (word recognition) perceptual (tachistoscopic word flash) task as a means of investigating the types of information processing that may…

The primary goal of early reading instruction, according to this paper, should be to teach children to comprehend written discourse in a manner similar to that for oral discourse because both types of discourse require decoding ability--graphic or acoustic. The paper asserts that to simply design reading instruction to achieve the subgoal of…

Hartford, Connecticut's Intensive Reading Instructional Teams (IRIT) were designed to improve achievement levels of elementary pupils deficient in basic language and reading skills. In 1978-1979, 683 students in grades two through six received instruction in reading vocabulary and comprehension and in decoding. This report updates and expands an…

Three studies were conducted as part of a series designed to identify the subskills of word identification that correlate most highly with reading comprehension and to examine various methods of assessing these subskills. In the first study, the prototype of a decoding (word identification) test was administered to 282 first, third, and fifth…

It was hypothesized that nonverbal auditory-visual processing skills relevant to reading could be investigated through a music program structured to parallel the verbal decoding process. The current investigation consisted of three endeavors: the development of a nonverbal reading prototype (through the application of music); the development of a…

This study investigated whether the teaching of a classification system of context clues will help children to better use context clues and improve their comprehension. One hundred twenty-seven students selected from grades 3-5 in two schools served as subjects. One school was designated as the experimental school, and subjects were taught cause…

This program, included in "Effective Reading Programs...," serves 115 disadvantaged children in first through third grade and includes black, Filipino, white, and Spanish-surname students. Begun in 1965, Total Reading is a complete language arts program for the primary grades which integrates the teaching of reading, writing, spelling,…

The reading policy issued by the Arizona State Board of Education in July 1971 requires that high school graduates after 1974-75 shall, in addition to other regular graduation requirements, demonstrate ability to read at least a ninth grade level of proficiency. Each local school board has complete autonomy to develop its own performance…

This study investigated whether the number of oral reading miscues differs for reflective and impulsive children, whether the proportion of miscues that are semantically appropriate, syntactically appropriate, or graphically similar differ for the two groups, and whether the two groups differ in their self-correction behavior as it relates to…

Children in first, second, and third grades were subjects in a study that investigated how well they drew inferences after reading their own dictated stories, peer-dictated stories, and adult-written stories. Results showed they inferred better if they dictated the story themselves or if they were accurate decoders. (HOD)

Shows how conceptions of literacy in reading have changed and what sorts of instruction best suit each conception. Identifies four conceptions of literacy: (1) decoding, (2) structural comprehension, (3) elaborative comprehension, and (4) critical thinking, and argues that each is best allied with a certain form of instruction. (FL)